This was the first house I ever owned. The first new house I ever owned. I had been hired the previous year by the English Department at the United States Air Force Academy after a series of interviews with the History Department and English Department in the Summer of 1977. My four-year-plus assignment at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota as a Missile Combat Crew Deputy and Combat Crew Commander would be up in June. I would pull 235 alerts in that time. But with that assignment ending, I would have to figure out where I ought to move next during my career. While I was at Minot, I had completed in the Spring of 1978 a Master's Degree in the Humanities, so I would have the necessary requirements to become an English instructor at the Academy. I had preferred the History Department, but they had too many applicants and I was not picked. But the English Department wanted me.
What I would not know is that had I been chosen by the History Department instead of the English Department, I likely might never have met the toxic cadet who ruined my career as well as his own. I would not have been his academic advisor and probably would have had a longer Air Force career. My Academy career would have ended after four years and, again, I would have had to choose another Air Force assignment. But none of that would be necessary. And I would live in the house on Palmer Park Blvd. from 1978 through 1991, before moving to Denver. I rented out the house over the next couple of years, most of which never worked out. In frustration at being an absentee landlord, I would finally sell that house in 1993 or 1994.
But the significance of 6555 Palmer Park Blvd. as it relates to the Rainbow Arc of Fire series was that I had finished the last of three volumes of poetry, finished an autobiography, and several abortive novels while I lived there. I was primed to finally begin the RAoF series once I moved to Denver and got settled. And by the fourth book in the series, WORLDS BENEATH US, my characters would return to the house in Colorado Springs to bury the remains of Schnozz, the cat I had acquired when I lived there so many years before.
Here is how the house looked while under construction in the summer of 1978 before I was able to move in before the fall term began:
From the basement window, I could see Pike's Peak. From the windows above, I could see the Spanish Peaks on the Colorado-New Mexico border as well as many of the significant sites and tourists destinations of Colorado Springs: The Broadmore Hotel, Cheyenne Mountain, Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun and the Colorado Springs Zoo. The population of the Colorado Springs area would explode in the 1990's, but I was no longer living there then.
The builder declared it had "a million dollar view" and he was right. I paid $54,700.00 in 1978 dollars (of course, almost all of it a VA mortgage). The builder declared it had "a million dollar view", and I certainly agreed. I paid $54,700.00 for it in 1978 dollars. Almost all of the mortgage was a VA loan which I never fully paid off before I sold it after 13 years.
In a later volume in the series, OLIVE BRANCH, I had the Greek Gods and Goddesses emerge from under the base of Pike's Peak to jointly fight with the Rainbow Arc of Fire against an alien invasion of the Earth.
